What garlic taught me
One Friday I got a fantastic text that said, “ Do you want to help harvest garlic at our farm Saturday morning? 10am - 12pm? I didn't hesitate to write back, “For sure!”
So I spent my Saturday morning with a dear friend, Josh Slotnick. Kim and Josh have owned Clark Fork Organics for 30 years in Missoula MT. I’ve seen their children working side by side with them through the years, playing in the fields, chasing their dog around, eating fresh pulled carrots with bits of dirt on them. It’s a beautiful life to watch.
Farming isn’t about just growing food and making money. Farming is a lifestyle, a way of viewing the world. Much of it you can’t even “put a price tag on” We haven’t really come up with an economic price for creating dark rich soil that teems with worms. That smells dark, nutrient rich and just wholesome. It's a different smell from the hard packed soil, dusty soil or muddy soil. It is soil that smells like life. And it is a lifestyle that is filled with heart.
Josh took his tractor and undercut the garlic row so it would be easier for us to pull the garlic out, shake off the dirt and twist the roots off. We then layed the garlic down along the row and would later pick it up.
Efficiency is key in farming. Somehow I automatically turned our garlic picking into a competition “Josh...you’re beating me! I have to call Jeremy so I can keep up with you!” And he retorted, “You are just like a sibling, and by the way Rach, I’m not even going fast! I’m taking it slow so we can chat.”
This inner competition runs deep in me. If you asked me if I was competitive I’d say absolutely not! But I am the youngest of six children and it is ingrained in me to keep up with the bigger kids. And with a 10 year span between me and my oldest sibling, that meant a lot of internal comparison, lots of learning that was way over my head, lots of feeling like I can’t do things.
I’ve carried this with me without even knowing it was inside of me. It’s only after years of reflection, getting comfortable with myself and awareness that I can see that I am competitive. I strive to be the best I can be. I look at what others are doing and compare myself to them.
And this realization has been the mind blowing part of my growth. Comparison is where I get stuck. It can help me achieve but it can also hold me back. Comparing ourselves to others is the worst thing we can do as someone else would always be better, stronger, smarter, prettier and the list goes on and on.
The reality is, everyone is just different. And we need to harvest and nurture this uniqueness inside us and learn to understand the things that make us who we are as an individual. It started as picking garlic one fine Saturday morning but ended with a wonderful realization of self-awareness.
